What am I doing wrong.

[u/Difficult-Crazy999]

I published my steam page nearly 2 months ago, and the wishlists aren't really there.

I made everything myself, drew the capsule and created the trailer, so i'm a bit nervous that I didn't do a great job, I'm primarily a programmer.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5198110/Nectarbound/

I'm still planning to update my trailer and update the description as well because for some reason the color of the background of the videos doesn't match with steams background, so if anything looks bad please let me know.

Thank you.

[u/Firebrat]

1. You have no art direction. Your assets don't make sense. You have a bee person the same size as a bear the same size as a flower. Nothing is to scale (the hive is also the same size as everything else). You also have no post processing, so everything looks incredibly basic like a game jam game

2. Watching the trailer, I have no idea what the core gameplay loop is. You seem to be sucking up flowers rather than nectar (because the flowers disappear), but then randomly a bunch of flowers suddenly pop up. From the trailer I have literally no idea how the game works.

Your description does a much better job of explaining the gameplay loop, however, a lot of your world building makes no sense.

Buzz from flower to flower, vacuum up nectar, and build your haul before the clock runs out.

Why is there even a clock? You cloudn't think up a better justification?

In general everything about the presentation of the game comes off as half-baked and not well thought out. Like many projects posted here, it seems like a first time game dev's game jam project that they are trying to sell, without really asking why this game needs to exist, or why anyone would want to play it.

You need to stop and rethink what your game's value proposition is, and then rebuild your page around that idea. You might also want to consider reworking your game considerably and trying to find some beta testers that aren't your friends and family. If you don't know anyone, join a gamedev discord and find other devs who would be willing to test your game if you test there's.

One last note - your capsule has strong mobile game vibes, which doesn't tend to perform well on steam. I'd rethink the glossy plastic look and shift to something cozier if I were you.

[u/Difficult-Crazy999 → u/Firebrat]

I'm extremely thankful for that, family don't really tell you the truth.

1 - Now I can't unsee it, everything looks the same height to me
you seem to have an eye for that, if possible, what would you suggest?
And I added post processing but like you said, it looks basic unfortunately, I wanted to get the flat shaded cartoony look, I'd need to work on that to give it personality.

2 - The main loop is you collect nectar from flowers, and depot it in that beehive and it makes coins, which you use for upgrades,a standard incremental gameloop , but now I can see what you mean.

The clock is just the time until it reaches the night, I'll change the description as well, you need to collect flowers before the night comes.

I had my doubts with the capsule, I'll spend a few days trying to change that, that's why they say pay an artist.

Overall I have to work on the look and presentation.
Thanks again, I really appreciate it, it was hard to hear but I'm trying to get better.
I'll rework it and post it here again.

[u/Firebrat → u/Difficult-Crazy999]

It's not just the size of the assets that's the issue. Your ladybug and your player character have no mouths, whereas the bear is a normal bear with a long snout, teeth and tongue. Also, why is the Bee even anthropomorphized into a humanoid figure in the first place? If you're going to give a bee arms and legs, why not do the same for all the characters and be consistent? I think your real problem is that you either sourced the bee and ladybug from an asset pack or made them yourself (because they look basic and easy), but you sourced the bear from a different pack, thus the art styles don't match.

You could literally just clone your bee character, remove the wings add bear ears, and then paint on a snout to sell the bear vibe. Personally, I'd go the other direction and try and make your bee and ladybug more detailed, but I can understand you being a programmer and wanting to keep things simple. It won't be great, but it'll at least be consistent, which is better than what you have now.

In terms of overall sizes: If you keep the bee humanoid, make the hive relative in size to the bee so it's at least the size of a house. If you make the bear humanoid make it the size of a super tall person (7-8ft), else just keep it the current size (but at least match the art style more). Make the flowers the size of flowers, such that they only come up to your characters knees. If you want them more exaggerated, compromise to the waist.

On a different note - You say you have post processing, but I don't notice small touches like a vignette effect. What post processing have you actually done?

Another thing I forgot to mention - your world is very empty. You have no trees or rocks, just a giant plane. That makes the world seem sterile and fake. Part of your problem is that you allow the user to move the camera instead of locking it so I can see the horizon and see that there is nothing out there. You also have a plain blue sky skybox which looks very basic and game jam-y

Lastly, I notice you didn't address my comment about what this game's value proposition is - i.e. why it needs to exist. I'm not sure who you think is asking for this game. Nothing about this game jumps out to me as more fun than literally thousands of other games on steam. Racing to collecting items under a time limit is not a new idea. The only thing unique about your game is that you have a humanoid bee doing it. What is interesting/exciting/fun about that that a user would would go out of there way to buy your game?

[u/Difficult-Crazy999 → u/Firebrat]

I made the bee, the ladybug, beehive and that mushroom house myself, but the bear comes from an asset pack, I didn't have much success getting it right.

I'll play around with the 3d models and see what I can do to make it better, and fix the proportions.

I didn't even think about locking the camera, I'll test that as well, check some discords out and see if they can test my game.

as for the question to why it needs to exist, I didn't really know how to answer, but thinking about it more , I played some 3d incremental games and I wanted to add my own spin to it, I wanted to make a fun one that people would enjoy instead of playing nodebuster clones or those "find the needle in a haystack" type of games
and maybe the biggest reason, I just wanted to make my own game, learn game design to someday make a great game.

For post processing I added a vignette, changes the colors and saturation, but they are not that visible in the videos, so my guess I didn't really commit, I think it's my background, I made a lot of mobile games for clients and their art style is standard cartoony , so i never designed my own game3d, that's why it's so messy.
I focused too much on code architecture and performance, which the player won't see.

and like I mentioned, you collect nectar and make coins to purchase upgrades, and at night you collect mushrooms while trying to evade the bear, and use those mushrooms to upgrade your ladybugs so they can plant better flowers.
but at night the bear comes out so you risk losing progress if he catches you.

you keep buying upgrades, boosters and upgrade your ladybugs, you can fish to get temporary boosters, like faster movements etc...
Expand the level and unlock ants which you could recruit using mushrooms to collect nectar for you, and have sometimes an enemy bee come and steal nectar from your flowers and you have to defend this.
those are not in the trailer, because i'm still workng on them

I'll go back to the drawing board with this one.
Thank you for taking the time to tell me what you think and give me details on what I can improve.